Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part One: Castillon Read online

  The count’s party moved quickly, raising a column of dust that could be seen from the convoy. The cardinal turned in his saddle from time to time to watch the count’s progress. His force of men-at-arms rode down into the valley, splashed across the ford, and started up the long ridge, now just a league away, closing the distance.

  The cardinal gave an order, and the convoy began to move faster. He turned to watch as the count’s cavalcade drew abreast of the oak woods on the bluff above the road.

  ‘We must kill them all,’ Alessandro said. His voice was as hard as steel. The Greek and Italian men-at-arms all nodded.

  Marcus and Stefanos, the best-armoured men after Alessandro himself, rode away, moving slowly so as not to raise dust.

  The rest of them dismounted in the trees, where they were bedevilled by insects for an uncomfortable hour. Peter took the two bows from the capitano, and strung them with Swan’s help. He drew first one, and then the other, and winced on both draws. He made a face.

  ‘Good bows. I’ll take this one.’ He put the bow by him and unstrung the other, and Swan handed it to the capitano. Alessandro looked at him.

  ‘Do you shoot?’ he asked.

  Peter rested his back against the bole of a giant oak and prepared to go to sleep. But he raised his face to Swan.

  ‘Toe nou! I’d be surprised if he didn’t shoot,’ Peter said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘I can use a bow,’ he admitted.

  Peter nodded, as if a mystery were solved, or perhaps as if Swan could now be taken seriously. ‘I’ve never met an Englishman who could not shoot,’ he said, and went to sleep.

  Giannis spanned his crossbow, put an arrow into the trough, and lay down.

  Giorgos and Ramone stayed with the horses. They had no armour, and no bows.

  ‘Always be sure of your retreat,’ Alessandro said. ‘Even when the odds are heavily in your favour.’

  The insects droned. Peter snored.

  There were hoof-beats near the ford, and the sound of harness and armour, and suddenly Peter was awake, bow in hand, standing behind the bole of his tree.

  Swan’s heart beat too hard. He was tired – he wanted to sleep, but he was too afraid, too full of something that made his nerves tingle, his stomach flip over, his bowels twitch.

  Alessandro just chewed on a grass stem and watched the road.

  The count’s men – led by the unmistakable figure of the count – came on at a fast trot. The count passed the silver in the road, but the next man reined in, and suddenly they were all stopped, and men were dismounting.

  Alessandro smiled, much as the fox might smile when the hen comes to find its missing egg. He snapped his fingers. Peter tensed, and Swan took a war arrow from the bundle at his feet, placed it to the string, and drew to his ear, cocking his head slightly to engage the muscles in his back.

  Giannis loosed. His crossbow made a flat snap. One of the men in the scrum over the coins flipped off his horse.

  Before his demise was noticed, Peter drew his great bow to his ear and loosed. His arrow hit the count’s charger and sank all the way to the fletchings in the horse’s side, and the great horse screamed and fell.

  Swan’s arrow wobbled in the air as it arched. Swan didn’t watch the fall – he knew he’d missed his loose as soon as his fingers released the string.

  Every head among the count’s men turned to the woods on the bluff.

  Peter’s second arrow took a black-bearded man in full plate armour under his arm while he waved at the woods. He fell backward in a rattle of plate. His horse stood stock still in the road.

  Peter’s third arrow plunged into the withers of a franc-archer’s horse. The horse bolted, ran a few steps, and fell in a spectacular crash, flinging his unlucky rider the length of a horse down the road.

  Swan’s second arrow struck one of the count’s routiers in the helmet. The arrow sprang away, but the man slumped.

  The count was demanding that another man-at-arms give him his horse. Three men turned and bolted, and the rest turned towards the wood and started to ride up the steep slope.

  Giannis finished spanning and took careful aim. He muttered a prayer to the Virgin in Greek.

  He loosed. His bolt took an armoured man full in the breastplate and flipped him out of his saddle.

  Peter’s fourth arrow killed an archer’s horse. The count gave up demanding a horse and started to run for the trees, a hundred yards away.

  Peter missed with his fifth arrow. Swan had just raised his eyes from fumbling for his third arrow, and he was having trouble nocking it. All of the non-archers were watching. Peter’s accuracy was remarkable. So when he missed, they all groaned.

  The riders were close now.

  Peter plucked his sixth arrow from the ground, whipped the nock on to the string, drew and loosed in a single long motion, and his bodkin point drove into a man’s unarmoured face.

  Swan put his third arrow into a horse. The horse reared, its feet flailed at the air, and together horse and man fell to earth.

  Peter plucked his seventh arrow and the remaining three riders were close enough to discover that there were too many men in the woods for them to defeat. Swan reached for his fourth arrow but Alessandro shook his head.

  ‘To horse. With me.’ He gestured.

  Swan dropped his bow atop the arrows and got a foot in the nearside stirrup.

  Peter and Giannis loosed together. By bad luck they both picked the same target, and a young squire died with two heavy arrows in his body.

  ‘Get them,’ Alessandro said. He and Swan were now mounted, and the two of them charged the survivors, Swan’s heart hammering away. The two men were turning to run. Their horses had galloped up the steep hill, and now they were blown.

  Alessandro was like an arrow. His horse passed across the two fleeing opponents’ front, and he cut back into them. In his first pass, he killed the horse of the lead man with a flick of his sword and a dainty montante into the animal’s unprotected neck. He and the second man swaggered swords – heavy, downward cuts ringing together.

  Swan rode up on the man’s left side and thrust under the arm while his full intention was on the Italian. He turned, mouth open to scream, and Alessandro ran him through the mouth. The blow cut away his jaw as he fell off the sword.

  Alessandro gave Swan a short salute, hilt to his lips. Then he rode across the face of the hill and waved up at Giannis. ‘Make sure they are all dead,’ he called.

  Giannis waved and aimed. And loosed. His quarrel hit the count, still running towards them. It knocked him down, but in a second he was up. His armour was good enough to turn a light crossbow.

  Peter’s arrow struck him a few paces farther on. It bounced off his breastplate, leaving a dent visible to Swan on his horse, twenty paces away.

  Swan, unarmoured, had no intention of engaging the count. His sword high, he swept wide of the armoured man, riding carefully to stay clear of the archer’s line of fire.

  ‘Face me!’ roared the count. ‘You sons of bitches!’ He had his visor open.

  Another arrow hit him – missed his face by a handspan and struck full on his lifted visor, ripping it away from the helmet.

  Swan angled towards him, trying to draw his attention away from Alessandro, who was coming up from behind the armoured man. But Alessandro caused him to turn – and then swept by to the right, his horse labouring on the hillside.

  Giannis shot a bolt into the back of the man’s unprotected thigh at twenty yards.

  The count screamed and went down.

  Alessandro rode up and dismounted even as Swan dismounted himself. Alessandro handed the Englishman his reins. ‘I’ll do this,’ he said. He shrugged.

  ‘Arrhhh. Arrhhh!’ the count grunted. He was rolling back and forth, his left hand scrabbling at the quarrel that had penetrated his thigh, broken the bone and probably lodged against his thigh armour – in front. He was clearly in incredible pain. His head thrashed back and forth.

  Alessandro walked ov
er to him – and suddenly the man dropped the pretence and got to one knee, his sword sweeping low in an attempt to cut one of Alessandro’s legs.

  Alessandro blocked some of it with a sweeping downward parry, but the cut was low and he had no leg armour, and he stumbled and went down.

  ‘Fuck you, you bitch!’ screamed the count. ‘I’ll kill every fucking one of you, you whores!’ He was on one knee.

  He began to drag himself to Alessandro, who tried to roll away.

  Swan had no armour, and he had a feeling that the count was far out of his league as an opponent. And he wasn’t sure he owed Alessandro anything.

  He considered intervening, and thought, I don’t have to do this.

  But he wanted to be a knight, and not a thief. He had a feeling – in a long moment between stillness and an explosive leap – that this was his moment to choose. As was so often the case, in one moment of decision, he dared himself.

  I don’t have to do this.

  I really don’t have to do this.

  He leaped over the Italian.

  The count cut down.

  He caught the cut on his high guard, as his uncles had taught him. The count twisted, but he was on one knee and probably not as powerful as he was used to being, and their blades locked, the two keen edges biting into each other just a little.

  Swan had the enormous advantage of being on his feet, armour or no armour. He lunged with his left foot and rotated his sword on the point where the two blades were locked, and punched his pommel into the count’s unprotected face.

  He was very fast. People always underestimated his speed.

  The count’s teeth exploded over his pommel, and the man fell back, and Swan, almost as surprised as the count by his own success, cut wildly, his point bouncing up from the count’s gorget and cutting across the man’s lips and left eye.

  He stumbled back.

  The count screamed a long, drawn-out scream. Swan had only ever heard such a scream from a woman in childbirth. He looked like some sort of nightmare monster.

  The count got his good leg under him and powered himself to his feet, his scream now a roar.

  Peter’s arrow struck his breastplate right over the heart. It didn’t penetrate. But it knocked the count back, and he unbalanced and fell down again, and the spell was broken.

  Giannis was shouting in Italian, ‘Get out of the way! Get out of the way!’

  But Swan stood between the monster in armour and Alessandro, who he wasn’t sure he liked.

  Alessandro was staunching the flow of blood from his ankle. ‘You have to kill him,’ he said.

  Swan walked over to the count, who was lying on his back with one leg cocked and the other flat on the ground. He was breathing as if he’d run a race.

  ‘Je me rends,’ he said heavily. ‘Je me rends.’ He waved his sword-hand.

  Swan put his right foot on the hand, pinning it to the earth.

  ‘Jesu! Get off it, you little bitch. I have yielded.’ The fire in the count’s eyes was unholy. Even with a foot on the man’s sword-arm, his face ruined by the pommel strike, a crossbow bolt in his thigh, he was terrifying in his full plate, and his size. Swan feared him, even now.

  ‘Pray, Messire Count. You are about to die.’ Swan placed his sword-point near the man’s face, and found that his point was wobbling from the trembling of his hand.

  ‘I’m worth a thousand ducats, sodomite. Get off my hand.’

  ‘Pray, messire.’ Swan found his hand was steadying.

  ‘God is a fucking lie, boy.’ The man lay there, his one good eye staring.

  Swan wished he would make one more attempt to rise – to fight. Anything to justify what he was about to do.

  His point wavered.

  Alessandro said, ‘Just kill him, for the love of God.’

  He took a deep breath and . . .

  Giannis leaned over and pulled the latch on his crossbow, and his quarrel blew through the man’s skull and killed him instantly. ‘There’s money wasted,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You hit bad, messire?’

  Peter was hobbling, favouring his side.

  In the distance, four dust clouds on the plain gradually merged to two, and then to one. By the time Stefanos came riding back, Alessandro was on horseback, one foot out of the stirrup and dangling, with Swan’s neck cloth around his ankle.

  Stefanos had Marcus over his horse. He shrugged at his capitano. ‘Bad luck,’ he said.

  Alessandro shook his head. ‘Dead?’ he asked.

  Stefanos nodded.

  ‘What a waste,’ Alessandro said. ‘You get them both?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stefanos said.

  ‘Where are the bodies?’ Alessandro asked.

  ‘In the river. In armour. What do you think – I was born yesterday?’ The Greek spat. ‘Any of them have anything worth taking? Those two had nothing but their swords.’

  ‘Leave it. Take nothing but coins. Nothing to mark us.’

  ‘What about the horses?’ Giannis asked with a whine in his voice.

  Alessandro was in pain, and his temper was short. ‘What did I just say?’

  ‘Fuck. What do we get out of this?’ complained Stefanos. ‘Marcus is dead. I got less than an ecu.’

  Alessandro glared.

  Giannis, Swan, Ramone and Giorgos dragged each corpse into the wood. It was hard work, and disgusting. Ramone put a knife into each corpse’s neck under the chin, just to be ‘sure’, and searched the corpses for cash.

  Peter picked up the count’s sword.

  ‘Leave it,’ Alessandro said.

  ‘It’s a fine weapon,’ Peter said, putting a touch of ‘v’ into the ‘w’ of weapon. A vine veapon.

  ‘It could get us all beheaded,’ Alessandro said.

  Swan noted that the capitano spoke to Peter almost as a peer.

  Peter nodded the way a man nods when he disagrees utterly. He dropped the sword in the grass.

  In twenty minutes, they were done.

  ‘Put fire to the wood,’ Alessandro said.

  The soldiers got a fire going, and spread it. The summer woods caught very fast.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Alessandro said.

  Paris was dull after the road. Alessandro’s ankle cut was worse than it had looked in the field, and he had to go to a surgeon to be bled. The cardinal had apartments in the Louvre, but the rest of them were housed in the Convent of the Ursilines, and the cardinal introduced Swan to the King’s Librarian. He was shocked to be given the run of the Royal Library. Days passed very quickly while he read. He did little but read.

  That was good, because every night he dreamed. He dreamed of the four men on the road, of the count’s one remaining eye, of the blood. Every night. Sometimes in the day.

  He fantasised about every young nun in the convent, went out with the notaries and drank too much on the silver of the men he’d killed, and diced and played cards until he felt tired enough to sleep without dreams.

  It never worked.

  After they’d been in Paris a week, the cardinal summoned him. A servant fetched him from Aristotle, and he walked up through the labyrinth of halls to the cardinal’s apartment.

  He bowed, was summoned forward, and kissed the cardinal’s ring.

  ‘Your Eminence,’ he said.

  Bessarion smiled. He looked strained. ‘I am about to trade you,’ he said. ‘I believe you said you were worth a thousand florins?’

  Swan noted that Alessandro was lying on the cardinal’s bed. He waved an idle salute.

  Swan twitched. ‘As to that . . .’ he said, smiling apologetically.

  ‘Half that?’ the cardinal said. He was already writing. ‘I’m trading you to the King’s Librarian. He wants you as his prisoner. He’ll use you in the library until your father arranges your release.’ He paused. ‘Of course, we’ll need your father’s name.’ He looked at Alessandro. ‘I’m sorry for this, young man. I had thought of releasing you without ransom after your daring on the road, but the truth is . . . we’ve had a disaste
r.’ Bessarion, the very model of decorum, or Roman-style gravitas, had a catch in his voice.

  Swan realised the man was on the edge of tears.

  ‘A . . . disaster?’ Swan asked.

  Alessandro rose on his elbow. ‘Constantinople fell to the Turks. In May.’

  Bessarion buried his head in his hands. ‘My city.’

  Swan was at a loss. Constantinople was a name redolent with magic – a wonderful place, a schismatic, heretical place, a palace of wonders. Babylon. He had to imagine that the flesh-and-blood Bessarion thought of the great city as . . . as home. Home, like London.

  Bessarion raised his head. Now Swan could see that he had aged. His lips were thin, his hair greyer. ‘Suddenly I am cut off from revenue. So I’m afraid I must sell your ransom, young man.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Swan shrugged.

  ‘Tell him,’ Alessandro said suddenly. ‘There’s no point in pretence, boy. Tell him.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Bessarion asked.

  Alessandro shook his head. ‘He’s not worth a sou of ransom. He’s someone’s bastard, that’s all.’

  Bessarion continued to look at Swan. ‘Is this true? Do you know this to be true?’ he asked.

  Swan was frozen. But if he said his father’s name, it would all become instantly clear, anyway.

  Cardinal Bessarion nodded. ‘Ah. Of course. What nobly born boy speaks Greek?’ He looked at Swan. ‘Tell us, boy.’

  ‘My father is dead,’ he said. He shrugged his shrug. ‘He was a cardinal. He wanted me educated for the Church.’

  ‘Kemp?’ asked the cardinal, his voice sharp. ‘Kemp had a mistress?’

  Swan lowered his eyes. ‘Cardinal Beaufort, Eminence.’

  Alessandro whistled from the bed. ‘You’re a bastard of that bastard?’ He snorted.

  Bessarion pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. ‘You aren’t worth a sou.’

  Alessandro laughed aloud. ‘So – you were a royal page!’

  Swan spread his hands. ‘Not for long,’ he admitted. ‘I . . . played a prank.’

  Bessarion shook his head. Raised his eyes from his hands and looked at his capitano. ‘I can sell the Ptolemy,’ he said. ‘It will get us the money to go to Rome.’

  Alessandro nodded.